Shadow Games with the Nymphs # 2
They say the secret to meditation is never skipping it and keeping at it day after day.
So I sat cross-legged on the living room floor, drawing in a long breath — hoo-hah — and letting it out, trying to settle into my rhythm.
That was when I heard Illinoi let out a mwehehe snicker.
"Mwehehe! The Secret Card that I, Illinoi, planted in advance has been activated...! It is the dreaded Squirrel Trap...! Every monster summoned this turn loses 500 Attack...!"
"Eeek...! The Death Squirrel that I, Oinoi, just summoned has had its Attack reduced to 0...! At this rate it is no longer a squirrel of death but merely a small and adorable squirrel...!"
"This is a moment of desperate peril...! This Coris has absolutely no idea who is going to win this game...! In truth, this Coris does not really understand the rules of this game either...!"
Hoo-hah.
I kept trying to steady my breathing and sink back into meditation, but between the nymphs, who had apparently been hollering at each other for hours already, today's session was a complete and utter failure.
"What in the world is so fun about that?"
I stepped out into the yard, where autumn had crept in overnight and the leaves were just beginning to turn. On a mat spread across the cool, refreshing breeze, the nymphs looked up at me.
"The master of the house must join us...! This Duel Stone is tremendous fun...! I, Oinoi, have completely lost track of time...!"
Duel Stone.
It was a game where you used all manner of cards to whittle your opponent's life points down to zero. There were countless card types, each with their own strategies, so it was hugely popular with men and women, young and old alike. And since there was a collector's element to it, some of the rarest cards supposedly fetched prices in the tens of billions of won.
Teto, the S-Ranker from Egypt, had made headlines recently for buying one of the so-called God Cards.
Burning tens of billions on a single piece of cardboard. The wealth of S-Rankers truly was something to envy.
"It's strange that it's popular again, though."
I found it rather curious that Duel Stone — the card game that had been all the rage when I was in elementary school — was enjoying a major revival lately. Old cards were being reprinted, tournaments were being held everywhere, and Egypt, the country behind the game, was apparently promoting Duel Stone at the national level.
"The Mysteries of the Dimensional Rift Pack is of the utmost importance...! From this pack, one can obtain the rare Dog-Squirrel and Honey Ant cards...!"
The Mysteries of the Dimensional Rift Pack? Now what was that supposed to be?
Some newly released booster pack, apparently. Dog-Squirrels and Honey Ants as cards.
It was a moment that made me realize card games, too, were evolving right along with the changing world.
"Hey! Illinoi! I told you to come outside and wait for me in front of the house when I got here at lunch!"
Just then, Seo Yerim arrived at the well house. She took one look at Illinoi hunched over her card game and scowled.
"Ugh, this kid. Blowing a fortune on card packs every single day because she thinks she'll pull a God Card...! Ildo, you spoiled her for no reason, and now it's a real problem...!"
Seo Yerim laid into me as if the nymphs' total obsession with card games were my fault. Apparently, the madness had started when I'd handed Illinoi a Duel Stone card pack a while back — which, I had to admit, was a fair point.
"Mwehehe! I, Illinoi, am aiming for the Osiris, Fairy of the Underworld...! No one has ever obtained it...! And no one can stop this Illinoi...!"
Three God Cards, each of which had supposedly been released as a single copy in the entire world. Illinoi seemed to be scraping together every won she didn't have to buy card packs by the truckload in pursuit of one of them — in frankly astronomical amounts.
Thanks to that, the nymphs were drowning in leftover cards, building whatever decks their hearts desired and having a wonderful time.
Shwk—.
Seo Yerim sighed as she polished the sunglasses perched on her forehead with her cloth.
"Because Illinoi's been buying card packs like a lunatic on the corporate card, people are saying our Telos might be partnering up with Egypt's Duel Stones Company, and the stock price is swinging all over the place."
"It's gotten that bad?"
"Actually, now that the rumor's out, the partnership is happening. Duel Stones made the first offer. I have no idea why a company that never moves an inch suddenly decided to move."
Duel Stones was a megacorp on par with Telos itself. If the rumors were true, it single-handedly drove Egypt's Fifth Industry, accounting for over seventy percent of the country's GDP. And thanks to Duel Stones' spectacular performance, Egypt had leapfrogged its way to the world's fourth-largest economy.
"Telos is teaming up with Duel Stones to release a mobile game. I'll be doing the ads myself. Download it too, Ildo. Got it?"
A famous card game going mobile. So that was why Teto, the Egyptian S-Ranker, was coming to Korea.
"You work hard, Seo Yerim. I commend you."
I reached a hand out toward her. It was on the list of training objectives, after all — the one that said a Kore's head must be patted.
"What's with that hand? Are you making fun of me right now? Hmph!"
But Seo Yerim was a far pricklier creature than an enraged Keongkeongi. As I concluded that stuffing my arm into the mouth of a starving shark might actually be safer than patting Seo Yerim's head, I decided to save the head-patting for a better opportunity.
The Duel Stones Official Tournament, held to commemorate the mobile game's launch.
People from all over the world poured into Seoul City for the event.
"Mwehehe! Behold the skill of I, Illinoi...! My deck is the Capitalist Deck, which employs high-cost monsters...! It will make you witness the power of capitalism...!"
Illinoi had declared her entry into the tournament. Her Capitalist Deck apparently revolved around the field card Capitalism, activating its effects based on the number rolled on a die.
In other words, a deck whose performance rose and fell entirely on the luck of the dice. Though I had to wonder what capitalism and dice rolls had to do with each other.
"Mwehehe! In a capitalist society, luck matters too...! However hard you strive, without luck you can still end up a loser...!"
So that was her reasoning.
Soon Oinoi, the ditch water nymph, was trembling as she gazed down at her stack of cards.
"I, Oinoi, am curious how far I can go with my Squirrel Deck...! The Squirrel Deck swarms the field with low-level squirrels to overwhelm the opponent in the early game...!"
Oinoi ran a Squirrel Deck that seized control of the field right from the opening turn and never gave the opponent a moment to breathe. She would bury her opponent under a flood of squirrel cards early on, then boost their Attack with power-up cards like Grrrowl...! to finish things off in one decisive rush.
"This Coris shall use the Kore Deck...! This Coris possesses three whole copies of the super rare Blue-Eyes Kore...! When fused, they become the Ultimate Blue-Eyes Kore...!"
I honestly had no idea what Coris's deck was supposed to do. In fact, I had my doubts about whether Coris truly understood the rules of the game at all.
Anyway.
I was simply content that the nymphs were enjoying the culture of the twenty-first century to the fullest and living each day happily. It made me feel like I was doing my duty properly as their temporary guardian.
Of course, I hadn't come to watch the card tournament just for the nymphs.
"People of all nations, I bid you greetings."
A woman standing atop the stage addressed the crowd, a microphone in her hand. Her Korean was fluent and elegant.
"Today is a day blessed by the gods — a most auspicious day upon which to begin a great undertaking."
She was a striking woman with dusky brown skin and long, flowing orange hair. Her golden eyes glittered so brightly they seemed to blaze with inner light. She wore gauzy silk robes like an ancient priestess, and the staff she clutched like a scepter — wrought of gold, garnet, lapis, and diamond — was every bit as legendary as the rumors promised.
"So that's the Priestess — Teto...!"
Egypt's S-Ranker. On paper, she outranked even the man they called 'the strongest', Achilles, by a full step at S-Rank Number 4.
Since she almost never appeared at official events, her arrival was wrapped in an air of mystery, and I found myself a little moved by it!
"She's not someone you get to see often!"
It genuinely surprised me that someone who gave hardly any interviews and almost never appeared in the media had come to Korea just to celebrate a card game tournament.
Then again, for promoting Duel Stone — Egypt's beloved national pastime — even the enigmatic Priestess Teto presumably had no choice but to take it seriously.
"Begin!"
"For the next week, Seoul becomes a battlefield for Duel Stone...!"
"Civilians, clear out of Seoul while you still can!"
The tournament began. The crowd scattered in every direction, and the nymphs raised their hands high with a collective waaah.
"Let us all do our best...!"
The tournament would run for a full week. Duel Stone players would seek each other out, duel, and steal one another's points to qualify through the preliminaries, the main bracket, and the finals.
An entire city as the tournament grounds. It said a lot about just how much interest the Korean government was taking in this megacorp collaboration.
As an aside, every participant wore a mechanical device on their wrist. It was Ohsa Group's latest gaming PC, complete with augmented-reality functions for displaying all sorts of information — a gadget commanding prices in the millions of won apiece.
This tournament was the real deal.
"By the way, Lee Jina — why are you wearing one of those devices?"
I asked, and Jina spotted me and shrugged.
"I'm competing too."
"You're kidding me."
I was genuinely astonished that Lee Jina of all people played a card game like Duel Stone. It just didn't seem like her at all.
Card games were, generally speaking, an indoor hobby. And she was, by anyone's definition, an outdoor type.
"What's that supposed to mean? I've played cards plenty. Used to take them off the creepy kids in my class. Ripped off a whole pile of rare cards too. These are mine."
Shwk—.
Jina pulled a stack of cards out from between her tank top.
Where on earth had she been keeping those...!?
...There were things in this world I simply could not comprehend.
In any case, it turned out Jina had financed her childhood card habit by shaking down her classmates. It tracked.
Then Jina asked me something.
"What about you, Ildo? Aren't you entering? I figured the prize for this one would catch even your eye. The winner gets an official card made with their own name on it."
What was that?
I hadn't heard about that.
So if I won the tournament, a Living Legend — Ha Ildo card would be printed?
That would be an excellent way to boost my fame!
"You can register your deck and sign up until one o'clock this afternoon. Two hours left."
"Jina, did you enter for the prize too?"
"No. It's a job. Some gangster friends of mine hired me. A secret society or whatever that plays something called Shadow Games has entered this tournament. Every last one of them is an awakener, so they're dangerous. Threat level: A-Rank."
It sounded like something straight out of a comic book. But Jina's expression was dead serious.
"A few of the kids I know have actually lost card games recently and had their souls knocked clean out of them. Supposedly it takes days to recover. There's even a missing gangster — Kim Dalgun."
"Seriously? The news hasn't said anything about that."
"There's plenty about this tournament that stinks, and it isn't just one or two things. That woman they're calling the 'Priestess' is suspicious too. Watch yourself, Ildo. You've got a real talent for tripping into trouble wherever you go."
With that, Jina vanished off somewhere in a hurry.
So that's how it is, huh.
I started worrying about the nymphs.